Lyell: Alabama game will be good learning experience for Colorado State

Sep. 17, 2013

This is the “Bold New Era” at its best. Or maybe its worst, depending on your point of view.

I like the fact coach Jim McElwain and athletic director Jack Graham worked out a deal for CSU’s football team to play games at Alabama this season and again in 2017 or 2019.

If you’re going to talk about becoming a major football power and competing for spots in the College Football Playoffs that will replace the Bowl Championship Series next year, you’ve got to be willing to compete with the very best.

And Alabama clearly is that, having won two national championships in a row and three of the last four. The Crimson Tide is 27-2 over the past three seasons and is coming off a 49-42 win Saturday at Texas A&M that avenged the most recent of those losses.

I know CSU doesn’t have the size, speed, strength or talent to compete with the Crimson Tide this season. I doubt the Rams ever will. Only a handful of schools in the country, mostly of which are with Alabama in the Southeastern Conference, can ever hope to match the recruiting success of the Tide.

That’s OK.

You don’t build your program up by rolling over a bunch of patsies. That’s not how Utah, TCU and Boise State made runs from the Mountain West Conference to BCS bowl games. While CSU was playing schools from the Big Sky Conference and struggling to beat them, those teams were playing the best opponents they could — on the road — and eventually started beating them.

Players, coaches, boosters and fans of those programs got a chance to see up close what big-time college football is all about. That’s what McElwain hopes his program gets out of Saturday’s trip to Tuscaloosa, Ala., where a sellout crowd of 101,821 is expected at Bryant-Denny Stadium to see the sacrificial Rams (1-2) take on the Tide (2-0).

Can CSU win the game? Not likely. Can the Rams at least make the game competitive? Probably not.

What they can do, though, is learn from the very best. They can, as McElwain said Monday, use this game to “measure” where they’re at now and where they hope to go. They’ll see how big the gap they’re trying to close actually is, and I’m guessing it’s a lot larger than they realize.

Reality checks are important. Those CSU defensive backs who were celebrating hard hits after giving up 6-yard gains on third-and-4 plays in the season opener might have a different view of how good they actually are after facing Alabama’s offense.

The Rams’ offensive line has never seen defensive linemen like they’ll face in this game, and the defensive line will get a chance to see how it will match up against an offensive front with the size and skill to match that of an NFL team.

No matter what the final score is, and it could get pretty ugly, the Rams will learn some valuable lessons they’ll carry with them for the rest of their careers — the rest of their lives.

If you’re going to strive to be the best, you might as well get a good look at what that actually is.

Sports reporter Kelly Lyell can be reached by email at KellyLyell@coloradoan.com. Follow him at twitter.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.